The 8 key steps to creating your perfect brand identity

29 Apr

A brand is so much more than a logo. And it’s more than just an image or a product.

A brand represents established values and genuine strengths and attributes. It has a story to share that will attract, connect, and engage with a specific audience.

Brands should also reflect value and pricing, aspirations, and lifestyle, as well as personality and character. Over time, the best brands transition from just names into our everyday language. For example, when we want to search for something we ‘Google’. When we have a headache, we take ‘Aspirin’. When we need to clean the floor, we ‘Hoover’. When we want to stick things together, we use ‘Sellotape’ or ‘Super Glue’.

Building a successful brand requires a certain process. The one I’ve created and refined over the last 25+ years which I’ll share in this article, has created, and continues to deliver brand identities that, combined with the creative marketing strategies, clever design application and campaign management, have been the foundation for our clients to attract more customers, increase turnover and achieve their business goals.

Step 1 - Listening

We’re all ears. No, seriously we are. From the very first conversation or meeting we have with a prospective client, all we do is listen and ask questions. Any agency, consultant, or designer that you choose to help you develop your brand needs to get to know you and your business first. They should ask you questions about what you do and how you do it, but more importantly they should find out ‘why’ you do what you. It’s important for us to understand what makes you tick and really get under the skin of your business to fully appreciate your values, strengths, uniqueness, preparedness, and aspirations.

Step 2 - Researching

This step is where we go off and do our own fact finding. The aim at this stage is to have a reality check and qualify some of the statements and claims that may have been made in the previous conversations. For example, we often get told that this new product is unique and doesn’t have any competitors. In truth, from an external perspective, there is always a direct competitor or substitute product available. The intention is not to dampen hopes and dreams, it is simply to ensure that the identified opportunity and product strengths are genuine and viable before any further investment is made. It may also help us highlight different / better opportunities or applications that could turn out to be even more successful and profitable.

Step 3 - Reflecting

This is our all-important thinking time, properly reviewing the information we’ve gathered from both the initial meeting and market research. It helps ensure we haven’t missed anything; no rocks remain unturned and no questions unasked. It allows the information to sink in properly and kick start the creative process. But before that, we’ll summarise and share our findings with the client to demonstrate that we’ve done our homework and best placed to help them with the next steps.

Step 4 - Briefing

Once we’re all on the same page, the next step is to document everything we’ve discovered so far in the form of a project brief. This is a process in itself and takes the form of a questionnaire that we jointly complete with the client to ensure we’ve covered all bases. After all, what gets written, gets done. Within the scope of the brief, we’ll cover things like timescales, budgets, competitors, targets, tone-of-voice, key messages, and applications as well as strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, challenges, and difference audiences to be catered for (e.g. customers, stakeholders, employees, investors, press / media, competitors).

Step 5 - Creating

With the briefing document agreed and signed, we finally get to the fun stuff. We’ll pick apart the brief to extract inspiration for ideas and themes that will form the basis for the brand designs. Initially we’ll come up with a dozen or so themes and concepts, then whittle them down to the strongest 3. Each will have a story to tell, linking back to the information in the briefing document. In some instances, this may also include coming up with name suggestions and messaging / taglines which involves its own market research to check availability of domains, social profiles, trademarks, etc. I wrote a previous article about generating names for brands which you are welcome to check out here - Name that brand.

Step 6 - Presenting

Once the final 3 concepts have been refined, they are tested for scale, mono / black & white and reverse applications. Then we consider colours that are aligned to the tone of voice and values of the brand. Colour has an important role to play in any brand. For example, red is often associated with fast paced and convenience type products (McDonalds, KFC and Coca-Cola) whereas blues are used a lot by tech firms to give an air of sophistication, ‘blue sky’ thinking and calmness - think Microsoft and IBM. Within a typical client presentation, we’ll show the ‘naked’ concept, how it works mono, reversed and with its proposed colour palette, and finally a couple of mock-ups to demonstrate how it could work in real life (e.g. on some merch, staff uniforms or signage). During the presentation, we’ll explain which elements of the brief have inspired each concept - although most of the time due to the way the brief is constructed it is usually obvious.

Step 7 - Choosing

Preferred brand concept selected, our next job is to generate a set of logo files and brand guidelines to help ensure the correct application in future. This is designed to be shared with suppliers, such as printers, sign-makers, web developers and digital marketers to maintain integrity of the brand design across all media and materials. The key to building a strong brand is consistency.

The logo files will be delivered in all the different file formats and colours specified, ready to be shared along with a simple-to-follow brand guidelines document that makes it easy to check and police all future applications. And if a client is unsure, we always offer to review any designs free-of-charge to help avoid incorrect applications or future brand degradation.

Step 8 - Application

The delivery of the logo files and guidelines is just the beginning of the brand journey. As mentioned in the previous step, consistent application of the new branding is critical in building a strong brand and maximising the return on investment. And who better placed to assist in the application of the branding than the people who designed it in the first place? But even if a client prefers to employ the services of others, the extensive range of files coupled with the guidelines will help to ensure they present a clear and cohesive image to their target audiences.

If you’d like to read more about how we’ve used this process to help our clients build brands and successful businesses, check out our case studies.